This is Wailey, who may be coming to live with me as early as this week! See that perfect little heart on his shell?

From Rebecca, his mama, about how she named him:

"I forgot to explain about his name. Before I got him, I had read Terry Pratchett's "Wee Free Men," in which there are beings called pictsies that speak in a thick Scottish accent. It's very silly, but when the pictsies get upset, they say "Oh waily waily waily." When I would see Wailey in the store window, trying in vain to push his head through the glass, he would look at me and I could just hear him saying "Oh waily waily waily," because he couldn't get out. You are, of course, more than welcome to change the name. He doesn't know it is his. (But he'll always be Wailey to me!)"

A small boy lived by the ocean. He loved the creatures of the sea, especially the starfish, and he spent much of his time exploring the seashore.

One day the boy learned there would be a minus tide that would leave the starfish stranded on the sand.

When the tide went out, he went down to the beach, began picking up the stranded starfish, and tossing them back into the ocean.

An elderly man who lived next door came down to the beach to see what the boy was doing. Seeing the man's quizzical expression, the boy paused as he approached. "I'm saving the starfish!" the boy proudly declared.

When the neighbor saw all of the stranded starfish he shook his head and said: "I'm sorry to disappoint you, young man, but if you look down the beach, there are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see. And if you look up the beach the other way, it's the same. One little boy like you isn't going to make much of a difference."

The boy thought about this for a moment. Then he reached his small hand down to the sand, picked up another starfish, tossed it out into the ocean, and said: "Well, I sure made a difference for that one!"